Kalistani Major History

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First Fleet returns to Base: Sanctions and Impoundment regime sunsets on the Anantonese
Kalistan looks to drafting of NBC and NAM treaties
Port Swedes, Vrassa
January 1, 5367


Elements of the 1st Regular Fleet begin returning to base at Port Swedes

The sanctions regime against Trigunia and Gao Soto which have been in place for more than a decade have officially ended, as the elements of the 1st and 3rd Regular Fleets returned to their respective ports across northern Kalistan. "in fact," said Naval undersecretary Amanda Howard, "I mean as a matter of fact, the sanctions regime expired a number of years ago. The navy ceased impounding or stopping ships in practice ten years ago. Both regimes that these sanctions were directed against have for the most part ceased to exist, and while we are not sure the criminal elements associated with them will ever fully be brought to justice, there is no longer any point in continuing to keep a sanctions and embargo regime in place that hurts free trade in the area while having zero effect on the targeted states. So, the Government decided to finally and fully lift the sanctions, and the hightened alert in the Ocean has been reduced."

Kalistan is once more on a full peace footing, as it prepares to begin working on two comprehensive treaties that should further undermine the ability of warmaking states to affect affairs in our corner of the world. The first is a new version of the Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) Weapons ban, which aims to eliminate weapons of mass destruction from Terra. Historically, the NBC has not been very popular among the nations of the world, as regimes like to preserve the right to build these weapons and use them as they please. "But in the new NBC," said Nathan Calle, of the Foreign Ministry, who is tasked to draft a new NBC treaty, "we would ask especially the states who will never build them in the first place, for whatever reason, whether it be ideological or material, to sign on to the treaty to say to the world not only 'No" but "HELL NO! No WMDS!', and then to put pressure and bring international disapprobation to nations who remain committed to the systems of mass death."

The other major treaty the Foreign Minister would like to get started is the Non-Aligned Movement Treaty, that would allow nations to sign up to Non-Alignment. "With joining the NAM, we also want to have the ability to give people a reason to want to balance the great power states in the world," said Dr Carol Ananto-Donner, who is leading the team working on the NAM treaty for the Foreign office. "We aren't planning collective security: instead we are talking about free technology transfer, the ability to buy and sell weaponry, and an ability to identify who friendly regimes are in the process of establishing a new balance in the world order. Great Powers, and even large players might join individually, and they will be welcomed, but the commitment is to stay unaligned and resist the forces in the world that tend toward alignment and forming blocks that can subsequently threaten the rest of us. Kalistan is not into that, and we know there are more countries who would support a group working together to prevent elite led alliances from dominating the planet."

These two moves fit Kalistan's over all strategic outlook of defense in depth of the Republic, as well as, in terms of projection of soft power, undermining the ability of major powers to use hard power anywhere around Kalistan. "It is a function of the asymmetric nature of Kalistan's place in the international scene," said Calle. "We aren't going to support nuclear armed powers into the World Council. We aren't going to stand by while states gang up on weaker nations and dictate to them what is going to go on. And at the same time, we are not going to directly confront them in either the international diplomacy realm or in the waters of the Anantonese Ocean. Kalistan has a measure of security now that is fairly unprecedented, and a lot of that has to do with military cooperation with Lourenne and economic cooperation with our neighbors. We are in a good place right now to help build a movement like this, a movement of small and medium nations, to break out of the polarization of the world, to not pick sides, to continue to exist by not playing the game by the rules that the greater powers set up to promote their interests."

The treaties are expected to be introduced into the National Assembly within 6 months and then go out for ratification.